How various regions fare in Modi’s Cabinet

There has been much talk of the politics behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘s 5 Jul Cabinet reshuffle. It hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that several new appointees came from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, both states in which the BJP has big stakes and that have elections due in 2017.

But how important is regional representation in the appointment of ministers? One way is to look at how under- or over-represented various regions are. This map (from the business news daily Mint) shows that Hindi heartland and western Indian states have the strongest representation:

A good first cut, but this only gives us absolute numbers. And it shouldn’t surprise that the more populous states get the most ministerial positions. One way to check under- or over-representation is to compare a state’s presence in the Council of Ministers with a baseline expectation of how much it should have. One way to do this is to look at the ratio of a state’s share of ministries with the proportion of Lok Sabha seats that it has (a number that is also roughly aligned with its population share).

And here is what we find:

Best represented states in the Council of Ministers (ministry share/LS seat share)

Surprise! Goa and Arunachal Pradesh are at the top of the list, since the appointments of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju give each 3.5 times (or 350% of) their parliamentary presence (proportionate representation is equivalent to 1, or 100%). However small states skew these results because the appointment of only one or two ministers can give them huge over-representation.

The states with the highest representation include those with well-established state BJP units that comprise the party core (with Haryana a notable outlier). Conversely, the states with the lowest representation are mostly those where the BJP is weak (with the interesting exceptions of Assam and Chhattisgarh where the BJP is the ruling party).

Regional representation isn’t the only factor in allocation ministerial positions, administrative ability and identity group balancing being other plausible drivers that could explain some of the deviations from 1 (or 100%). But the broad pattern seems consistent with a patronage model of politics in which political parties need to keep their base happy, motivated and delivering benefits to supporters.

Update

Another way to predict how much representation a state “deserves” would be to look at its contribution of parliamentary seats to the ruling coalition, in this case the 331-member National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The pattern now appears somewhat different:

Best represented states in the Council of Ministers (ministry share/NDA seat share)

This time the small states are joined at the top of the list by large states in which the NDA has a limited presence. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu score high because they account for two and one ministers respectively, the same as the number of MPs they sent to the Lok Sabha. Among the larger states, the best represented are West Bengal (4.2), Tamil Nadu (4.2), Odisha (2.1), Haryana (1.8), Madhya Pradesh (1.4), Punjab (1.4) and Karnataka (1.3).

Other than Madhya Pradesh, which remains in the overrepresented column, the Hindi heartland and western states now seem more fairly represented, staying close to their weightage in the NDA: Bihar (1.1), Jharkhand (1.1), Rajasthan (1.0), Gujarat (1.0), Uttar Pradesh (0.9). Under-represented NDA states include Chhattisgarh (0.4), Maharashtra (0.6) and Assam (0.7).

From the NDA’s point of view, Modi’s Council of Ministers provides a good balance. No major state other than Kerala gets short shrift (though some in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Assam might grumble).

The method in the madness is clear, if you want “special money packages” announced [can’t say if they will come true] , or have many union ministers [ who knows what good that does anyway], then have state elections.

No one except the “seva” organization cares otherwise, and that too, not for good reasons.